<html>
<head>
	<title>The International tab</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="FFFFFF">

<h1>The International tab</h1>

<center><img width="360" height="233" src="intl.png" /></center>

<p>These preferences support options allowing Logisim to be used in many
countries. The tab includes three options.</p>
<ul>

<li><p><b>Gate Shape:</b> Logisim supports three standards for drawing gates:
<em>shaped</em> gates, <em>rectangular</em> gates, and <em>DIN 40700</em>
gates. The following table illustrates the
distinction.</p>
<center><img width="412" height="176" src="gates.png" /></center>
<p>Because the shaped style tends to be more popular in the U.S., while the
rectangular style tends to be more popular in Europe, some people refer to
these styles according to these regions; the region-neutral terms
<em>shaped</em> and <em>rectangular</em> are preferred.
The DIN 40700 standard was a standard for drafting digital and analog
electronic components adopted by DIN, a German standards organization. DIN
adopted the rectangular standard for digital components in 1976, but some
engineers continue to use the older style; they appear to be increasingly
rare.</p>

<p>Logisim does not follow any standard exactly; it steers a middle
ground to allow switching between them. In particular, the shaped gates
are more square than the dimensions defined by the relevant IEEE
standard. And, although XOR and XNOR gates really ought to be the same
width as OR and NOR gates with the rectangular style, they are not
because of difficulties compressing the shaped-XOR gate.</p>

<p>Currently, the rectangular OR gate is drawn with a "&gt;0" label
rather than the proper label illustrated above, because many platforms
still don't support a full Unicode character set.</p></li>

<li><p><b>Language:</b>
Change between languages. The current version is supplied with
both an English translation and a Spanish translation. The Spanish
translation has been contributed by Pablo Leal Ramos, from Spain.
It was complete as of Logisim 2.1.0, but subsequent versions have added
new options that remain untranslated.</p>

<p>I welcome translations of Logisim into other languages! If you
are interested, contact me, Carl Burch. This will not be a commitment:
I will be happy to hear of your interest, and I will tell
you whether I know of somebody who is working on it already,
prepare a version for you to work with, and send you instructions.
The translation process does not require an understanding of Java.</p></li>

<li><p><b>Replace Accented Characters:</b>
Some platforms have poor support for characters (such as
&ntilde; or &ouml;) that do not appear in the 7-bit ASCII character
set. When this is checked, Logisim will replace all instances of the
characters with the appropriate equivalent 7-bit ASCII characters.
The checkbox is disabled when the current language does not have
any equivalents available (as with English).</p></li>

</ul>

<p><strong>Next:</strong> <em><a href="exp.html">The Experimental tab</a></em>.</p>

</body>
</html>
